1.5 Duration

The short-term traveller can usually get a Leave-of-Absence for a 'sabbatical',
and return to the old job and living conditions, if the company has such a
program and will approve it. This may be a necessity to prevent disrupting the
family. Consider the option of Leave-Without-Pay if you do not have enough
vacation time. Long-term travellers usually quit their job, sell or lend most
possessions, place the rest in storage, and return when the funds run dry.

If you are not able to leave work for a long trip, you do not have enough
money, or you do not want to race through a few cities, you can always decide
later to separate a slow, expensive, long trip into segments. By planning to
see the whole world, you will also realize which places you want to see first.
If you miss places during your trip, you will already be prepared for future
trips.

I do not suggest that you try to see it all in one trip, otherwise you
are only going to see a bunch of airports and ugly cities. It is better to
spend your time getting to know fewer places than running around collecting
passport stamps. Spend time in one location, see the area, the people, the
towns and villages, and then move onto the next stop.

To get a realistic estimate of the length of your first trip, list all the
cities or countries vertically. Then give each the number of days you would
like to spend there, taking travel time between cities into account. Consult
travel books for reasonable estimates on ground travel time between locations.
You can use a calculator, however a spreadsheet will add the days for you. A
word processor is also handy, because it allows you to easily re-arrange your
destinations as you prepare for the trip.

This worked pretty well for me on my first trip since I realized I needed to
reduce the number of cities and countries I was planning on visiting in a given
time. Now, I just look at the size of a country and my level of interest in it,
then figure at least 1-2 months. There were many things to stop for, so most of
the places I was racing to get to the border before the last
visa extension expired. When you have a time limit on your visa, it is like
having a string with knots that you can drape on the map any way you want, but
it is gets shorter every day -- the trick is getting out before the visa expires,
which isn't easy in a place the size of China. When you are travelling
long-term, your plans change about every five minutes, as someone is always
whispering an interesting idea in your ear. If you are on a short trip (for
example: summer holiday from school, or taking a year off before graduate
school), and have set dates for transiting between cities, then you will not
find yourself in these circumstances.

Most people are doing a one-year route. Regardless of how much money you
have, I now suggest returning home after a year for physical and mental reasons, if
you are new to long-term travel.
You can go pretty fast for about two or three months, then you burn out,
Eventually, somewhere around the six-month point, you realize what the proper
speed should be. Many people I have met and corresponded with started getting
homesick after nine months. Going home on a yearly basis juxtaposes what you are
seeing and reminds you of the good and bad aspects of travel, just in case you
forget them, like I started to do. You change after a year and it is good to get
home to see how. It is also important to stay in touch with family and friends.

If you want to see many places, consider two separate one-year trips -- the
cost of tickets will be about the same since the side-trips get costly, and you
can visit regions far apart that wouldn't easily or affordably be done on a single
ticket. If I had gone on two 1-year trips, then I would have dropped off some
stuff, picked up some stuff, and been better prepared for the second half. I no
longer think of it as a Big Trip, more like the first of many Extended Trips.

"Another way to approach this is to have a more detailed idea for the
start of your trip, with probably more accurate (but still wildly wrong)
estimates for time; and then vaguer plans for the rest of the trip, with
maybe not even all the countries, except those you really don't want to
miss. I strongly recommend flexibility as the key to planning. You
generally need to know some imminent plans -- but the long term can be more
flexible. Just guess at about how long you want to be away -- most likely
this will change as you either get very sick and are forced to return
home; or have such a great time that you need a lot longer; or you run out
of money." <Chris Finlayson>

"I do not think you can or should plan the duration of your trip by
adding up a schedule of time at each destination, unless you have a limited and
precisely dictated amount of time for the trip (say 2 or 3 months). Instead,
decide how long you want the trip to be, then let the trip expand to fill the
allotted time once you are on the road. The idea of seeing the world in a year
strikes me as ridiculous, even a lifetime would not suffice. Take all the time
you have, and realize everyone spends more time than they plan. Remember to pace
yourself slowly enough to actually experience the places you are passing
through. The best times I have had are when I just hung on someplace for a much
longer period of time than I had planned, or than I needed to see the
sights." <Larry Lustig>

"One time-consuming task that we did not anticipate was running
errands. At least once a week we would spend half a day or even a full
day running errands: refill first-aid kit, check on flights, phone home,
shop for clothes (e.g. socks, underwear) and toiletries, buy postcards,
buy patches (for our backpacks), buy notebook and/or pen, plan where we
were going next and what we wanted to see, buy bus tickets, get maps, mail
stuff home, buy traveler's cheques, buy food, etc. You do not do all
these things each week, but there is *something* that needs doing each
week. :-)" <Russell Gilbert>

"Man, I'm jealous!!! About 3 years ago my wife and I went on a
six-month round-the-world trip -- WAYYYY too short, even a year might seem not
enough." <Eberhard Brunner>

"I started off surfing in Indonesia and visiting friends on Java and
Sumatra. After about five months I knew that I could not go home so soon. There
were so many interesting places to visit, I was spending so little money, and
having such a great time that I decided to extend my trip. I was gone about ten
months before I seriously thought about turning my trip into an
RTW." <Keith Conover>